Smrt Lernins

The second in our Secular Thursday series of secular homeschooling mom archetypes, The Organized Mom, has been guest authored by my own favorite Organized Mom, Patchfire of A Little Rebellion:

When Smrt Mama was preparing for this, her first year of homeschooling, I probably overshared my own preparations. Needing to balance the needs of two students and a toddler too, I was even more organized than ever before. I think it was the color-coded schedules that finally did her in. The result was being used loosely as a model for the Organized Mom archetype. Now Smrt Mama’s asked me to pontificate for a bit on the strengths and weakness of Organized Mom.

Here’s a quick refresher on the Organized Mom archetype, pulled from Smrt Mama’s original post on the topic:

* The Organized Mom – She is better at this than you will ever be. If you’re comparing yourself to other homeschoolers, just go ahead and quit before you get around to comparing yourself to her. You might even consider flinging yourself on your sword. She has her days scheduled to the color-coded minute and her children obey them perfectly. She researched her curricula extensively and is most likely following a Classical model. She’s already finished planning her curriculum for next year. Her children are enrolled in enrichment programs and are now very enriched and can Appreciate (with a capital A) art and music. Her motto: “It’s never too early to start looking at colleges.”

Her strengths are many. Organizing, knowledge, vision, and confidence stand out amongst them. There are weakness there, too – overscheduling, trying to do too many books and too many curricula, and above all, the possibility of arrogance. Organized Mom doesn’t know how not to be organized, though, so the key is mitigating the weaknesses.

Strengths: The obvious is first: organization. Organized Mom has a system for computer files, pieces of paper, and everything in between. Often blessed with a good memory (or a good back-up system!), Organized Mom has a place for many things, even if it’s not immediately obvious. She extends this organization onto her time, with an almost eerie ability to coordinate errands, enrichment activities, exercise, and other time demands in order to maximize efficiency. The color-coded schedule? Merely a written diagram of what’s inside her brain.
Weakness: Kids need time to play freely. They need downtime, and some spontaneity, too.
Solution: Be sure that the color-coded schedule allows that time for free play and downtime. The kids will come to look forward to it, and will also know no screen time is allowed during it. Also, don’t extend the color-coded schedules too far. Scheduling the schoolwork: good. Scheduling your Saturday down to fifteen-minute intervals? Bad. Sometimes a block of time would be better served by a checklist than a schedule, and other times, the schedule kept 95% of the time should enable Organized Mom to break the schedule entirely.

Weakness: Armed with her knowledge of curriculum, Organized Mom wants to use the best resources. All of them.
Weakness: In an attempt to play to her personal subject strengths as well as shore up her personal weaknesses, Organized Mom can easily unbalance her children’s curriculum. Afraid of shortchanging them, their enrichment activities may end up concentrated in just one or two areas.
Strength: Organized Mom knows about lots of good resources, and can change course for various children, or offer suggestions for other homeschoolers.
Strength:Organized Mom knows where her homeschool is going. She may have a formal vision statement written, or a list detailing what a high school graduate should know. She’s looking into the future, and planning with the end in mind.
Solution: Use that vision statement! Organized Mom sometimes needs to step back and look at the big picture when she’s caught up in the minutiae. Often, simply picture where a certain program or curriculum fits (or doesn’t!) in the overall plan will help her make a good decision. Organized Mom is also a perfect choice for running (or at least attending religiously) a homeschool moms’ night out or curriculum sharing night. With her knowledge of various curricula, she may know just the program for Suzy Neighbor’s advanced ten year old, or Kelly NextTownOver’s budding reader. She’s also unafraid to change programs for the needs of her different students. One child may thrive with one approach, and the next another. Luckily, she knows the ins and outs of many, and can meet her children’s needs accordingly.

Strength/Weakness: Organized Mom is confident. She has a plan and a vision, and knows what to use to achieve it. If she were inclined to make comparisons with other homeschoolers in the beginning, she’s stopped after just a year or two, or maybe less. Even when there are doubters, she just tunes them out. Think Rachel Berry on Glee singing “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” There can be a fine line between confidence and arrogance, however, and one of her biggest strengths (confidence) can all too easily become a big weakness (arrogance).
Solution:The phrases “in my opinion” and “in my experience” can help mitigate the occasions when she steps close to the line. Organized Mom must still be careful to gauge people’s reactions, whether online or in person. If she’s not skilled in reading people, even more caution may be required. She shouldn’t let fear of alienation through arrogance keep her from sharing what she knows and has learned, however, which makes this strength/weakness duo by far the most difficult to navigate.

Organized Mom is the quintessential Girl Scout, living up to the motto of “Be prepared.” If her children don’t win college scholarships and go on to rule or change the world, she’ll have just one thing to say. In the immortal words of Han Solo, “It’s not my fault!”

[Note from Smrt Mama: Do you identify (even partially? somewhat humorously?) with any of the remaining homechooling archetypes? Would you like to guest author a future Secular Thursday blog post at Smrt Lernins? Email Smrt Mama with your ideas for the Secular Homeschool Archetypes series!]

Remember the homeschooling mom archetypes? Today’s Secular Thursday post is the first in a series about how to play to your archetype’s strengths and plan for your archetype’s weaknesses*. Of course, few homeschoolers really fit into one category — we’re mostly a sampling of two or three (I’m Earnest Mom, with a side of Idealist Mom and a little sprinkling of Allergic Mom) — but knowing how to work around our tendencies to keep from getting hung up will only benefit us.

I’ll start with the archetype nearest and dearest to my heart butt ( because it’s possible I once got drunk after a hard day of homeschooling and had her motto tattooed there)…The Earnest Mom. A little about Earnest Mom:

The Earnest Mom — She really, really wants to be good at this. She’s absolutely certain that homeschooling was the right decision for her children. She’s equally certain that she could screw up at any moment and doom her children to a lifetime of social awkwardness and community college. She relies on the experience and expertise of other homeschoolers, especially The Organized Mom, to guide her curriculum choices. At one moment convinced the work load is much too heavy, and the next, adding logic and Bavarian folk dancing, she’s desperate to get it Right™ so that her child can be successful and well-rounded. Her motto: “Does this sound rigorous enough to you?”

I think this archetype’s weaknesses are fairly apparent. Yes, Earnest Mom is a little needy. She’s also insecure and at times quite demanding (“What’s your opinion on this?” “How do you think I’m doing on this?” “Please pause your busy day so you can address my curriculum insecurities!”) She never feels quite confident about her children’s work loads or her curricula choices, which means she does a lot of rearranging of the schedule and tends to go through multiple curricula options in a year for any given subject. This can be frustrating for the children and expensive for her. She needs a lot of feedback from those she views as “expert homeschoolers” (especially Organized Mom).

Weaknesses she has in spades, but what are Earnest Mom’s strengths? For starters, Earnest Mom isn’t usually going to be the one assuming she’s doing it right and everyone else is wrong. She’s open-minded about curricula and is willing to experiment and even completely toss something if a better option goes along. This means she’s eager to engage in discussions on curricula with other homeschoolers and take their opinions into account. She wants to do it Right™, so she won’t keep doing something that doesn’t work, just because that’s the way she’s always done it. She values a community and will usually willingly participate in an open exchange of ideas and materials.

How can Earnest Mom make the most of her strengths and turn those weaknesses into something useful? Here are some suggestions on combining strengths and weaknesses into helpful tools for Earnest Mom’s homeschooling toolbox:

• Weakness: Earnest Mom is insecure about the rigors of her curricula.  Strength: Earnest Mom values input from experienced homeschoolers.  Helpful Tool: Find a tolerant homeschooling mentor, especially one with similarly-aged and/or similarly-skilled children, who can model how s/he uses certain curricula to its utmost advantage. Feedback from someone who has been there and done that will bolster Earnest Mom’s confidence in her choices.
• Weakness: Earnest Mom replaces curricula frequently, which can become very expensive.  Strength: Earnest Mom enjoys a feeling of community with fellow homeschoolers. Helpful Tool: Look for a like-minded (or like-minded enough) group of homeschoolers for a regular curricula “open house” and meet n’ greet. Earnest Mom’s wide assortment of discarded curricula can be helpful for other homeschoolers, engendering goodwill, which helps Earnest Mom feel validated.
• Weakness: Earnest Mom feels uncertain about balance and rigor in her children’s schedule. Strength: Earnest Mom actively seeks out input, especially advice from Organized Mom, whose children’s schedules she perceives as perfectly (or nearly perfectly) balanced and rigorous. Helpful Tool:  Organized Mom’s color-coded daily schedules clearly demonstrates how her school days are balanced, allowing Earnest Mom to easily take note of the amount of academic, rest, play, etc. time in an average day. Earnest Mom can take a page from Organized Mom’s book, and develop her own color-coded schedule — a week-at-a-glance version, so that she can easily see any gaps that need to be filled. Earnest Mom will get to feel like an Organized Mom and develop more confidence in her ability to adequately meet all her children’s educational needs.
• Weakness: Earnest Mom is very self-effacing, as a coping mechanism for her insecurity. Strength: Earnest Mom has no problem confessing how incompetent she feels and years of self-effacement have made her at least remotely funny about it. Helpful Tool: Start a homeschooling blog, sharing all the ins and outs of your struggles with homeschooling. Earnest Mom’s ability to point out her own massive failures will make readers forgive her when she questions decisions made by others. Positive comments will make her feel better about herself. Negative comments will make her spend hours of introspection trying to discover areas where she could either be a better homeschooler or be funnier about not being a better homeschooler.

Hopefully, this advice will help the Earnest Moms out there. Do you like it? Is it okay advice? Was it useful? Someone please tell me I’m not failing as a homeschooler blogger! (That’s a joke right there, see?)

Tune in for our next installment, Homeschooler Archetypes: The Organized Mom.

*Lest you think I’m putting myself out there as some homeschooling expert (oh heavens, no!), I’ve been talking to other homeschooling moms who would self-identify as these categories and getting input from them on how they augment the stuff they’re best at and work around the stuff that isn’t their cup of tea. If you ever see something vaguely smart in this blog, remember that it probably came from somewhere else, as all you’ll get from here is SMRT. As I continue this series, expect to see some guest bloggers who have much better advice to give than I could ever fabricate!